SIDE STREETS: In the midst of World War II, a nurturing act of kindness

Quiet and sunny at the Edward F. Doolan Apartments in the South End. Quiet inside the small apartment 87-year-old Frank Buchanan shares with his wife, Helena. On Sept. 28, Buchanan will be headed to Washington, D.C., with his daughter, Margaret Flynn. It’s an all-expenses-paid, one-day trip to th...

Quiet and sunny at the Edward F. Doolan Apartments in the South End. Quiet inside the small apartment 87-year-old Frank Buchanan shares with his wife, Helena.

On Sept. 28, Buchanan will be headed to Washington, D.C., with his daughter, Margaret Flynn. It’s an all-expenses-paid, one-day trip to the nation’s war memorials, where Buchanan and others like him will be honored, courtesy of Flight of Honor, a nonprofit with a commitment to recognizing America’s veterans.

Buchanan, who served as a machine-gunner in North Africa and Europe during World War II, has all the medals a man could want, including a Bronze Star, about which he is matter-of-fact.

“Oh, that,” he said. “One morning, I took out a tank. I rolled under it with a magnetic mine.”

Buchanan, born on a farm in New York state, moved to Fall River as a young boy. He was raised, as he says, “across from The Rodman Cafe,” a long-gone bar of some repute.

During the war, Buchanan was outside Altenburg, Germany, having fought his way through a lot of geography, most of it hotly contested.

He describes at least part of how he got there, talking about crossing a pontoon bridge.

“The Germans saw us on the bridge, and they started hitting us with artillery,” he says. “I ended up in the water.”

He shed his boots, dropped his gun and drifted with the current until he found himself more than a mile inside enemy lines.

“I crawled out on the bank,” Buchanan says. “There was a big rhododendron bush there, and I hid in it.”

Two days later, he heard voices speaking American English.

“Could you guys help me?” was what Buchanan said.

He ended up in a hospital with hypothermia and frostbite.

It was a hard time in a hard place. Buchanan was part of the forces sent to occupy Dachau, one of the German death camps. He has a picture of the garden outside the camp gates.

“We pulled 156 bodies out of a hole right there,” he said.

More than six decades later, he still has a small photograph of him with a baby deer. A shy, spotted fawn the curly-haired soldier is holding tenderly.

As for the deer, one night, living under canvas, Buchanan left his tent for the latrine.

“I though it was a dog,” he says of the deer that appeared out of the night. “She came right over to me.”

Frank Buchanan was drafted at 18 in 1944. In 1945, he’d seen things most men don’t see, but there’s a lot of boy in a 19-year-old, no matter what he’s seen. What boy doesn’t want a pet deer?

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“She stayed in my tent for two weeks,” Buchanan said.

Buchanan said he’d fall asleep every night with the deer busily licking his head.

“It went after my sweat,” he said, adding that deer like anything salty.

“I used to wake up in the morning with my head a wet, sloppy mess,” he said.

“They made me set it free,” he said.

Buchanan came back to Fall River, married and worked in a boatyard.

“My lungs are full of asbestos,” he says. “I have a pacemaker, too, but I feel pretty good.”

Quiet and sunny at the Edward F. Doolan Apartments in the South End.

Frank Buchanan has twisted a wrench, fired a gun, comforted a child, hugged a wife.

And once, a world ago, in the middle of war’s madness, those hands held a small, shaking deer.

“Side Streets” is a new column from Marc Munroe Dion, one that draws on his knowledge of the area and his affection for the city where he was born. It’s about people and places and history and the voice that only comes from one corner of southeastern Massachusetts.